Short chain hydrocarbons exist in many species and configurations. The most common natural occurring gaseous hydrocarbon, methane, is a single carbon surrounded by four hydrogen atoms. This molecule is abundantly found in natural gas reservoirs, generated from decaying plant and animal matter and is a very strong greenhouse gas. The abundance, low cost and negative environmental aspects make this gas of particular interest in the energy, chemical processing and environmental industries. For example, the energy market has continuously sought methods to increase the value of gaseous phase hydrocarbons through conversion to a liquid state. Likewise, specialty and fine chemical producers continue to seek low material cost avenues. Of equal importance, these industries and others have sought ways to convert waste gas streams into marketable liquid or solid products, through chain propagation.
Many such conversion opportunities exist where venting, flaring and re-injection techniques are presently deployed. For example, vented gas from landfills or co-produced at crude oil production sites, flared gas at oil and gas production sites and re-injected gas sites all offer potential economic interest. In addition the value increase from converting low value gas phase materials to liquid petroleum or solid compounds to be used as products, feedstocks or potential fuels has economic justification. Furthermore, and as significant from an environmental perspective, the environmental market has sought and continues to seek methodologies to eliminate the venting or flaring of gas products from landfills, bio-generation systems and waste management situations. Some additional areas of interest are associated with chemical processing sites, low to medium gas production sites, stranded gas situations and abandoned wells or coal bed methane and the like. Thus, opportunities arise from both economic interests and environmental concerns.
Numerous devices to propagate molecular chain growth in hydrocarbons have been developed and utilized with mixed results. In the past, attention has focused on conversion based upon the Fisher-Tropsch technology. In addition, the conversion of natural gas to hydrocarbons by high temperature, combustion heating, pyrolysis; microwave technology; electromagnetic radiation; electrical discharge; the use of a catalyst and non-catalytic oxidation techniques have been suggested. Some have suggested first heating the gas to convert a portion thereof to hydrogen and then using a catalyst to promote propagation. Specifically, patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,389,189, relating to pyrolysis; U.S. Pat. No. 5,277,773, relating to the use of microwaves; U.S. Pat. No. 6,602,920, relating to combustion heating; U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,667,085 and 7,915,463, relating to heating the gas and the use of a catalyst; and U.S. Pat. No. 8,277,631, relating to a plasma assisted electrolytic reaction have met with mixed results especially with regard to scalability to address remote, small generation sites.
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate College of the Oklahoma State University directed to “Hydrocarbon Rearrangements and Synthesis Using an Alternating Current Silent Glow Discharge Reactor”, on file at the Oklahoma State University Library, North Boomer Annex, OSU Thesis Collection, Thesis 1993 M283h, discusses the fundamentals of hydrocarbon pyrolysis. However, many practical problems were not resolved, such as, the efficiency of limited conversion of gas to liquid phase, nor was the utilization understood or defined. More significantly, the hazardous aspects of the device disclosed in the thesis, especially in view of oil and gas industrial health and safety conditions arising from the high voltage gradients involved in the device were not addressed. In addition, the possibility of an explosive reaction, and electrical shock to field personnel, as well as the limited physical aspects of the reactor itself, all of concern in the oil and gas environment, were not addressed. Furthermore, the chemical species within the liquid phase were not identified, nor were the impacts of operating parameters to component mix or formation rate correlated.